The Knowledge of Teaching – Pedagogical Content Knowledge ...

The Malaysian Online Journal of Educational Science

2015 (Volume3 - Issue 3 )

The Knowledge of Teaching ? Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)

Chien Lee Shing [1], Rohaida Mohd. Saat [2], Siow Heng Loke [3]

[1] Institut Pendidikan Guru Kampus Tun Abdul Razak, Sarawak chien_leeshing@

[2] Faculty of Education University of Malaya rohaida@um.edu.my

[3] School of Graduate Studies Asia e-University hengloke.siow@aeu.edu.my

ABSTRACT

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was first introduced by Shulman in the 80's. It is defined as the integration or amalgamation of pedagogy and content which basically covers the `what' and `how' of teaching. PCK was considered as the missing paradigm in the study of teaching. This integration of knowledge was long searched by the scholars in the United States in their effort to elevate teaching to the professional status similar to that of doctor, lawyer and engineer. As PCK is the knowledge of teaching, this concept paper presents an overview on definitions of teaching, indicators and knowledge bases required in good teaching. This paper also presents the conceptions and models of PCK, the processes (PRA Model) involved in the growth and development of PCK of teachers and the importance of PCK.

Keywords:

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), Teaching, Subject Matter Knowledge, Pedagogy

INTRODUCTION

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is the blending or amalgamation of pedagogy and subject content knowledge and was introduced by Shulman in the 80's. According to him, PCK was not something new because even as early as in the 1950's, both content and pedagogy were regarded as one indistinguishable body of knowledge whereby content is about what is known and pedagogy is about how to teach it (1986b). The reason why Shulman introduced PCK was because teaching career is often perceived as a non-professional career when compared to careers like lawyer, doctor and engineer. In Malaysia, individuals with no teaching qualification were employed as temporary teachers to overcome the shortage of trained teachers in the schools. Such practice further proven the non-professional status of a teacher. As the saying goes `those who can, do, those who can't, teach' (Shaw, 1903), it means people who are able to do something well can do that for a living, while people who are not able to do anything that well make a living by teaching (McGraw-Hill Dictionary, 2002). The proverb was used to disparage teachers. To exacerbate the status of teachers, it was reported that teachers in Malaysia lack of pedagogical preparation (Lee, 2014).

Two major recurring themes noted in the education reform reports in the United States during the 80's were the `professionalization of teaching' and `teaching deserved a professional status' (Shulman, 1987). Shulman further argued that it was necessary to raise and articulate clearly the education and performance standards of teachers in order to elevate teaching to "a more respected, more responsible, more rewarding and better rewarded occupation" (pp. 3). The urgency had brought about the searching of a missing paradigm in the research on teaching and teacher knowledge (Shulman, 1986a, 1986b, 1987).

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Definitions of teaching

Teaching is a process greatly explored by academicians and yet what we knew about teaching was only a glimpse of it mainly because teaching is a complex activity (Barnett & Hodson, 2001; Calderhead, 1987, 1988; Calderhead & Shorrock, 1997; Dunkin & Biddle, 1974; Holly, 1989; Mulhall, Berry, & Loughran, 2003; Newton, 2000; Parkay & Standford, 1995; Shulman, 1986a, 1986b, 1987; Smith & Neale, 1989; Sockett, 1987; Tigchelaar & Korthagen, 2004). Others said `teaching is a highly stressful activity for both novice and experienced teachers as it is full of uncertainty' (Barnett & Hodson, 2001), a universal activity (Duke, 1990), a problematic job (Borich, 1995; Loughran & Berry, 2005), an exciting but demanding job (Parkay & Standford, 1995), a lonely and insulated profession (Locks-Horsley, Stiles & Hewson, 1996; Schon, 1983), and a rewarding occupation yet tantalizing and challenging (Dillon & Maguire, 2001). It is also a job whereby its implementation often deviates from the initial planning (Loughran & Berry, 2005), an activity whereby the teachers and students working jointly (Shulman, 1986), an activity which provides opportunities for students to learn (Brown & Atkins, 1988), and the most difficult job in the world because "learning is the most complex phenomenon on the planet" (Stones, 1994, pp.312). From the various descriptions mentioned, one could see that teaching possesses many facets and complexity (Shulman, 1987) subsequently it is not easy to learn how to teach and become a professional teacher (Parkay & Standford, 1995).

Academicians reasoned that the complexity of teaching was because teachers used and integrated various types of knowledge simultaneously while teaching (Shulman, 1986b; Smith & Neale, 1989). Shulman (1987) argued that a teacher needed to have seven knowledge bases in order to teach effectively and successfully. The seven knowledge bases are (i) content knowledge; (ii) general pedagogical knowledge; (iii) curriculum knowledge; (iv) pedagogical content knowledge; (v) knowledge of learners and their characteristics; (vi) knowledge of educational contexts; and (vii) knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values. On the other hand, Smith and Neale (1989) proposed that teachers needed to know subject matter, content knowledge, instructional strategies knowledge and student knowledge in order to teach.

Besides integrating the knowledge bases, teachers also integrate the knowledge bases with their actions in a multiple way while teaching (Duncan, 1998). In short, teachers perform multitasking. For instance, they have to attend to their students who are unique, varied and unpredictable individuals (Sockett, 1987), then they have to respond to the environmental distractions, diagnosing students' learning difficulties and spotting their misconceptions, monitoring their progress and making necessary adjustment, plus many other routine or non-routine works and duties (Armstrong, Henson, & Savage, 2005).

Borich (1995) considers teaching as problematic because school is organized by problems such as discipline problems, curriculum problems, resource problems, parent and family problems. While trying to cope with these problems, the teachers have to make many complex and quick decisions by "thinking on their feet" to give an immediate response in their hectic fast-paced classroom (Barnett & Hodson, 2001; Borich, 1995; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Tigchelaar & Korthagen, 2004; Wilson, Shulman, & Richert, 1987). In fact, on an average, a teacher makes a decision every two minutes during class time (Clark & Peterson, 1986). It was also found that three quarters of teachers' decisions were made on an unconscious basis (Yinger, 1986) and most of the decisions are `new' and require immediate contextual judgement (Schon, 1983). Although the decisions made are purposeful and reasonable, many teachers in fact did not know why and how they made the decisions as teaching has become their second nature and is like `breathing' to them and this has contributed to the complexity of teaching (Holly, 1989).

Teachers work in isolation in the process of preparing to teach. They have to figure out how to teach by interpreting, communicating within themselves about puzzles and insights, making adjustment of the curriculum to suit the students and finally, having to test the ideas in the classroom all by themselves (Brandt, 1992; Dillon & Maguire, 2001; Holly, 1989; Schon, 1983; Shulman, 1986b). On the other hand, teaching is unpredictable and contextualized as every class is a unique community on its own wherein both teacher and students having their personal preferences in teaching and learning respectively (Barnett & Hodson, 2001). More often than not, teachers have to make adjustments and changes in their planning in order to meet different students' needs and preferences, thus the implementation of the actual teaching often differs from the actual planning.

Many parties, both outside and within teacher education, see teaching merely as a delivery of curriculum. They assume teaching is a simple skill which is equal to telling. This `dangerous view' has

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oversimplified the teaching process (Stones, 1994). It is difficult to define what constitutes good teaching and `no one method of teaching is superior" (Holly, 1989, pp. 103). Basically, a good teacher has the ability to adjust his/her teaching according to context, taking factors like students, subject matter, facilities, emotional climate and others into consideration and ensuring their students feel comfortable to learn (Barnett & Hodson, 2001). To Finlayson, Lock, Soares and Tebbutt (1998), a good Science teacher needs to have good competency, classroom management and a strong background knowledge of the subject. Studies show that teachers who lack content knowledge face difficulties and do not have confidence in their teaching (Finlayson et al., 1998; Hashweh, 1987).

Additionally, teaching can be generally categorised into three task domains, namely pre-active, interactive (Jackson as cited in Clark & Peterson, 1986) and post-active (Clark & Peterson, 1986). Although "the centre of teaching and learning is the interaction between the teacher and the learner" (Eble, 1976, pp. xi), the pre-active and post-active domains contribute to the success and the smooth running of the interactive domain. The pre-active task is mainly related to the preparing for the actual teaching episode whereby teachers need to comprehend, critique, adapt and plan content, materials and teaching methods (Reynolds, 1992; Shulman, 1987). During the interactive phase, teachers implement what they have planned, but make necessary adjustment of time and materials; at the same time, they also evaluate student understanding on what is taught. Reflection is the main focus in the post-active task, here, teachers reflect on the lesson and also the response of the students with the aim to improve future teaching.

The indicator of good teaching

Many people regard "more means better" and "results means everything" as the indicators of good teaching. Newton (2001) argued that the cost of chasing for high scores and quantity is a lack of understanding in learners. According to Herron and Nurrenbern (1999), students learn either by rote learning or by understanding and can be trained to give acceptable answers without understanding. They propose that teachers should give priority to learning by understanding as it has more potential than memorization. Newton (2000) further supports by saying that learning for understanding is "more sure, more durable, and more valuable for the learner" since the students have to make a connection of isolated pieces of knowledge, to think with flexibility and to solve problems. Gunter, Estes and Schwab (1999) also emphasized that good teaching is that learners can make connections between the new and old knowledge, thus teachers can assess students' understanding through asking questions or providing opportunities for the students to explain what they understood.

In brief, a few indicators were proposed in the past studies to assess the quality of teachers' teaching and students' understanding by assessing the students' abilities in (i) making connections between the isolated pieces of knowledge; (ii) making connections between the new and old knowledge; (iii) thinking with flexibility; and (iv) solving problems.

The knowledge bases of teaching

Basically, scholars believe in teachers need to possess some minimum knowledge bases in order to teach well. Knowledge base is defined "the secret of an expert system's expertise, the body of understanding, knowledge, skills, and dispositions that a teacher needs to perform effectively in a given teaching situation" (Wilson, Shulman, Richert, 1987, pp. 106). It was noted that the earlier knowledge base model emphasised on knowledge of self apart from the knowledge of the milieu of teaching, curriculum, pedagogy and subject matter.

Shulman (1987) rationalised that teachers need seven knowledge bases in order to teach effectively and successfully. The knowledge bases are content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, curriculum knowledge, PCK, knowledge of learners and their characteristics, knowledge of educational contest and knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values, and their philosophical and historical grounds. Grossman (1900) on the other hand, argued that it is sufficient for a teacher to possess four knowledge bases for teaching that is pedagogy, PCK, school contexts and subject matter. Barnett and Hodson (2001) advance that exemplary teachers use four kinds of knowledge in their teaching, namely: academic and research knowledge, PCK, professional knowledge, and classroom knowledge. Although different scholars expressed

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different views on the knowledge bases of teachers, they did agree on some fundamental knowledge bases such as subject matter and pedagogy or in short PCK.

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) The term pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was introduced by Shulman in the 80's to represent the missing content paradigm that education researchers had been ignoring all this while. Since then it has drawn much attention from the educational researchers and successfully shifted the focus of educational research to the so-called `missing paradigms'. This movement had strengthened the professionalizing of teaching (Carlson, 1999). The research findings on PCK have added knowledge and expanded the available literature related to it. Subsequently, researchers identified inadequateness in Shulman's PCK conception and they began to refine, modify, expand and derive new PCK conceptions. Theoretically, PCK is an academic construct (Loughran, Mulhall & Berry, 2004). In the modified versions of its conceptions, constructs are added either singly or in a combined manner. Similar to teaching, PCK is also complex, difficult to define and articulate by the holders, thus, researchers often face great difficulty in capturing and documenting it (Loughran et al., 2004).

Conceptions of PCK From the past studies, scholars had forwarded many definitions of PCK. Some of the scholars shared similar view with Shulman on the definition of PCK such as Smith and Neale (1989) and Cochran, DeRuiter and King (1993). Other scholars such as Veal and Makinster (1999), Cochran et. al (1993) and Grossman (1990) had forwarded some critiques on Shulman's model of PCK. Subsequently, they revised and refined Shulman's model. Shulman (1986b) defines PCK as the unique knowledge of teaching possessed by teachers, `the particular form of content knowledge that embodies the aspects of content most germane to its teachability', he wrote:

....pedagogical content knowledge, which goes beyond knowledge of the subject matter per se to the dimension of the subject matter of teaching. The category of pedagogical content knowledge includes the most regularly taught topics in one's subject area, the most useful forms of representation of those ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations and demonstration ? in a word, ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others .... Pedagogical content knowledge also includes an understanding of what makes the learning of specific topic easy or difficult; the conceptions and preconceptions that students of different ages and backgrounds bring with them to the learning of those most frequently taught topics and lessons (pp. 9-10).

It is noted that Shulman's PCK conception consists of two main elements that is how teachers represent the content knowledge and their knowledge about the difficulties faced by students while learning a particular topic in the content (Loughran et al., 2004). A teacher is said to teach with his/her PCK when he/she has gone beyond understanding the content subject, is capable of restructuring the subject content and present it in a form suited to the diverse interests and abilities of the students based on their preconceptions and difficulties encountered (Shulman, 1986b, 1987). Smith and Neale (1989) also shared the similar view as they also believe that teachers with good PCK are aware of their students' typical errors in a particular topic. As such, they are able to prepare their lessons with suitable strategies and effective elaboration which lead to students' conceptual understanding. Cochran et al. (1993) further express that "PCK concerns the manner in which teachers relate their subject matter knowledge (what they know about what they teach) to their pedagogical knowledge (what they know about teaching) and how subject matter knowledge is a part of the process of pedagogical reasoning" (pp. 263). The abilities of restructuring the subject matter knowledge to suit the diversities of the students further distinguished a teacher from a content specialist and verify PCK as the knowledge of teaching (Cochran et al., 1993; Shulman, 1987; Veal & Makinster, 1999).

Based on research findings, Grossman (1990) argues that teachers draw upon more than subject matter knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge while teaching. According to Baxter and Lederman (1999), general pedagogical knowledge is the knowledge of how to organize a classroom and manage

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students during instruction. Grossman (1990) further expands PCK conception to include four central components, namely: (1) knowledge and beliefs about the purposes of teaching a subject at different grade levels; (2) knowledge of students' understanding, conceptions, and misconceptions of particular topics in a subject matter; (3) curricular knowledge which includes knowledge of curriculum materials available for teaching particular subject matter, knowledge about both the horizontal and vertical curricula for a subject; and (4) knowledge of instructional strategies and representations for teaching particular topics (pp. 8-9). She further emphasized that the knowledge and beliefs about the purposes of teaching a subject is the "overarching conceptions" of teachers' teaching and is often reflected in their teaching goals. Teachers with student knowledge will ensure the appropriateness of the content and instructional strategies used in their teaching. An appropriately planned lesson is one which takes into consideration students' characteristics such as their prior knowledge and ability hence leading to meaningful and effective learning.

Cochran et al. (1993) commented that the Shulman's PCK conception is compartmentalised and static. They argued that teachers' knowledge on teaching should be dynamic, developing and growing continuously. Based on this constructivist view; they named their refined version of PCK pedagogical content knowing (PCKg) which means the expertise of teaching with a dynamic nature. PCKg is an integration of four types of teacher knowledge, namely subject matter knowledge, knowledge of pedagogy, knowledge of students, and knowledge of environmental contexts. The emphasis is on the last two components with teachers' understandings of their students as a central role in teaching. The assumption underlining this conception is that as teachers' experience grows, all the four components in PCKg grow too. The components may grow in an integrated manner if the teachers experience the four components simultaneously, otherwise the growth of the components may not be always equal. PCKg development is often accompanied by conceptual change and conception integration as a result of thousands of hours of teaching, observing and reflecting by teachers on their own as well as others' teaching. As PCKg develops and expands the distinction between the various constructs will blur out (Tuan, Jeng, Whang & Kaou, 1995).

Veal and MaKinster (1999) pointed out the lack of hierarchical relationship amongst the attributes in the PCK conceptions thus they designed a PCK taxonomy which displays relationship and connections among the attributes or components. The taxonomy consists of three levels with increasing specificity, namely general PCK, domain specific PCK and topic specific PCK as in the teaching of Chemistry (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The taxonomy of PCK Veal and MaKinster (1999)

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